Nowhere to Go
by Sally Mn
Summary: Vila said it himself...


**Nowhere to go**

_**AVON:**__ Why do you stay with Blake?_

_**VILA:**__ I like him._

_**AVON:**__ That isn't a good enough reason._

_**VILA:**__ It is for me. That and the fact I've got nowhere else to go._

**~oOo~**

Well, nowhere better, that's for sure.

You know that feeling you get, the first time you find somewhere, somewhere you've never been before and it just feels - I guess - just feels like - like home?

No, I don't know either.

And I probably wouldn't want to, remembering what I called 'home' back there on Earth. Trust me, the lower Delta Dome levels are no place for children, even - especially - orphaned brats like me. You get used to sleeping on scavenged rugs that don't mask the cold of metal-lined basements, and you get used to haggling for refuse offcuts from the processed protein blocks, smuggled down from the food dispensers (or stolen from the Epsilon areas, which were even worse - or so we were told). You get used to stealing from others like you for others who made you, to moving on quickly and quietly before the troops move in, and to watching those who didn't move quickly enough get rounded up, and to putting them out of mind as soon as they vanished. You get used to sort of surviving.

I mean, sort of surviving's better than the alternative... innit?

Then there's prison. I've called that home semi-sweet home for more years than I'd like to think about... but it was better, if only just. You get a bunk - and sometimes you don't even have to share it. You get fed - and well, the protein blocks aren't quite as old - and fake-fishy - as the ones in the Delta levels, even if the 'sauce' they smother them in tastes of mashed blubber and the drugs you know are there. And if the guards are crooked - yeah right, _if_, that's a joke - you might even be able to cadge a bottle or two of cheap booze. You survive a bit more.

Then go back to the Delta domes. A bit better, now you're older and can shift for yourself - sort of - well, shift other people's things to yourself. You can pay for a tiny cell - I mean, a _room_ - of your own for a while.

Then there's the London. It's cleaner, it's... not warm but less cold. It's dull and cramped and the suppressants are the best-tasting part of the food - so its almost good when they're increased yet again after Blake and the others disappear. It's got to be better than Cygnus Alpha, though, innit? Isn't it?

Cygnus Alpha's the first time in my life I'm outside at night. Cold and black and the stars look as far away as they are. This can't be 'home', it can't it can't...

**~oOo~**

It wasn't.

It was Blake who brought us - me and Gan - back to this ship. Blake who got rid of Loud and All-Too-Ungodly Vargas. Blake who asked us to be part of his crew (in front of Avon and Jenna too - I _wondered_ about that sour glance between them when Blake kept using the word "my") and Blake who offered to show us the ship. On the flight deck, Jenna took over, sparkling like an Alpha fireshow as she did. For the computer - Zen - Avon explained, dry and spare and trying not to shine with pride. I had a headache after the first fifty - forty-five - all right, thirty minutes.

Blake stepped in, suggested we 'get settled' and left the two of them still talking, though at each other now. I wondered if they'd been doing that since they'd left the London. From Blake's face, I thought they had.

First things first, he said. Practical as always, I thought.

Did we want food? They'd been working on the dispensers since finding the ship, and he offered us something brightly coloured and fluffy and sweet _and_ sour to taste - unlike anything I'd ever had before - and a hot drink almost uncannily _unlike_ Federation coffee, and actually drinkable. To get clean? Well, he called it a vapour shower and I called it soap-scented fog, all soft and misty, in a cubicle bigger than that Delta room, or as big as Gamma flat-for-one (Gan - the Gamma one - just called it heaven. Who am I to argue, or even ask what a heaven is?) Clothes? He showed us this enormous room filled with clothes, _real_ clothes, _good_ clothes - all bright colours and patterns and sparkles and shine.

Did we want to rest? And then Blake showed us the cabins. My cabin. It was bigger than the cell I shared with eight others on Alpha Marinus, cleaner than the Judgement Halls on Earth, warmer than the Epsilon boiler rooms for a scrawny Delta brat to hide in... and all mine.

And I went in, and closed the door, and sat on the bed. Ran my hands over the silver cover, sharp and bright to the eyes and as soft as stolen shadowsilk to the touch. Lay back and wondered whether clouds felt as good. Checked out the cupboards, big and shelved and wonderfully _empty_ and ready for me to fill with all the... Stopped that thought, and looked into the mirror, at my own awestruck eyes. The luckiest Delta rat in the galaxy - if I could just keep Blake from getting me killed before I could enjoy it.

I don't know if this is what people call 'like home'. Other people, graded people, Alphas and Betas. I only know I've got nowhere else to go - nowhere I want to go.

**-the end-**


End file.
